


Complexities

by flamingdongsaeng



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, Fluff, Introverted!Jongin, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Rainbow!Sehun, Romance, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Temporarily Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3114878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingdongsaeng/pseuds/flamingdongsaeng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be or to not be with Kyungsoo, that is the question. But Jongin is already sure of the answer to this supposedly rhetorical question: He has to be with Kyungsoo.</p><p>No matter what it takes. Even if he has to bury his feelings for the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complexities

Jongin wishes that life is much simpler than what he perceives it to be. He imagines peering into the planet in top view, where a sphere, or an _oblate spheroid,_ to be exact, is just a mere circle. People are just tiny, microscopic specks fluttering around in their platform. The Earth, just rotating slowly upon its axis: slow, steady, and constant. It’s like a petri dish full of already known bacteria, watching it grow into something already predicted by past records, to pry into the microscope in order to just _observe_ , rather than to analyze. That’s what he wants life to be. He wants simplicity and order, not chaos and variability.

But he cannot live in a world without a certain doe-eyed boy being there with him. _He_ has to be with Jongin, or else nothing at all. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it kind of situation.

To be or to not be with Kyungsoo, that is the question. But Jongin is already sure of the answer to this supposedly rhetorical question: He _has_ to be with Kyungsoo.

No matter what it takes. Even if he has to bury his feelings for the other.

***

Jongin stares at the blank spaces of his notebook, not bothering to take notes anymore. He hears strangers around him chattering in hushed voices, not at all perturbed by their math teacher blurting out equations that Jongin had already memorized back in middle school. All he hears is a slurry of words blended together until it forms noise, genderless and meaningless in the way it buzzes through Jongin’s ear and goes out unidentified by his brain in the other.

It’s the first day of high school for Jongin, and he still hasn’t made any friends. Not that he needed friends, anyway. He was content with watching and observing the people around him, and he does not want to participate in it, in any way possible. Though he is already participating in it by _actually_ being in the class, but Jongin doesn’t let that fact get to him.

In fact, in the sea of unknown faces surrounding him, he already recognizes one of his classmates. _Sehun_ , he remembers, as his eyes focus on the shrewd rainbow of a head two seats diagonal from his own. He picks out random colors: red, blue, yellow, green, pink. He stops at the color pink, as he realized that the color is not part of the seven colors of the spectrum. _Color vomit_ of a head, he rectifies himself of the earlier description. He was memorable because he was the first one to be sent to the principal’s office for the term, as the school regulates students to have just one shade of color on their hair, apparently.

His internal monologue was startlingly disrupted by the sound of his teacher calling his name, and he floundered about momentarily like a fish removed from the water. He stands up, the screeching sound his chair grating at his ears and Jongin tries not to flinch at the sound.

“What do we do next, Mr. Kim?” His teacher inquires, with a smug look that clearly says _I hope you learn your lesson and listen next time boy_. With that, Jongin feels indignant, and all he wants to do is to wipe that smirk off his teacher’s face.

He looks at the board, the numbers and symbols on the board starting to make sense to him as he searches for where they have stopped. He sees a quadratic equation equated to zero. He tries to factor them, but it just looks wrong to Jongin.

“We use the quadratic equation to solve for the roots, sir.” He concludes.

“Correct. Using that the answer will be?”

“Positive-negative five, square root of two.”

 “Take your seat Mr. Kim” The class just gapes at him and Jongin feels hot in the ears at the attention his classmates are giving him, _color vomit_ boy, included. He looks down, wanting nothing more than for the bell to ring, and get out of the room as fast as he can.

In the back of his mind, he wishes for his life to be as easy to solve as the problem on the board. He desires a universal equation to all the things that are left unanswered. An equation to the problem that is Do Kyungsoo.

 

***

 

Jongin rushes out of the room the instant the bell rings to signal lunch time. He pushes past students, shoulders bumping into him and hearing incoherent noise from all directions. He looks at the top of each door he passes through and quietly counts: _1-C, 1-D, 1-E, 2-A._ He stops at the unfamiliar room in front of him. Looking below, he sees a sea of green shoes which contrasts to his own blue ones. Jongin feels like they are glowing with the way the upperclassmen stare at him, like he’s some shiny new object they can play with. He fights down the stares as he made his way to the door of 2-B. His courage falters instantly as he went into proximity and instead decides to take a peek inside.

Of the approximately twenty-five people inside the room, he finds Kyungsoo in a matter of milliseconds. It’s just the back of his head, but he _knows_ it’s Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo turns for just a fraction in order for Jongin to see his face, and he’s laughing at some joke a taller guy is telling him. Another person drapes an arm around Kyungsoo’s shoulder, and Jongin just feels the urge to barge in and rip that dirty arm off his shoulder.

Jongin should have already known by now that Kyungsoo is not like him. He is sociable and friendly, which is a direct opposite to Jongin’s uncooperative behavior. He’s obviously going to have a group of friends. He realizes, as he sees Kyungsoo interacting naturally with the environment that as Kyungsoo belongs to Jongin, Kyungsoo also belongs to his friends and classmates. He should not take that away from him.

The moment he decides to leave and eat lunch alone is also the moment when Kyungsoo spots Jongin peeking from their classroom door.

“Jongin!” Kyungsoo calls out. He then comes running to him like he hasn’t seen Jongin in years. “Want to eat lunch together?”

“No.” Jongin says thickly, averting his gaze. “I just came by to see you.” He sticks through his lie, anyway.

“Aw, come on! We haven’t had lunch together since you were like, nine?” Kyungsoo laughs, his eyes turning into adorable crescents.

“How about your friends?” Jongin argues weakly. “They look like they want to eat lunch with you.” He adds, just to strengthen his already faltering resolve.

“It’s okay. I couldn’t just leave you alone to eat lunch all by yourself now, can I?” Kyungsoo explains, placing a hand on Jongin’s arm. Jongin shivers from the touch as he looks at Kyungsoo pointedly as if saying _how do you even know I’ll each lunch by myself?_

“I _know_ you will, and I also know you haven’t talked to a single soul before me, right?” Jongin just nods and thinks about his recitation with the teacher a while ago but he settles to pursing his lips to avoid further arguments.

“Now, lunch.” Kyungsoo declares. His lips form into a heart shape and Jongin wants nothing more than to know what it feels like to touch those lips with his own. He notices his heart beating erratically as Kyungsoo leads him to lunch by grabbing his wrists and chatting away carelessly. The contact isn’t electric to the touch like the how novels portray them, but Jongin feels at home with its warmth and he is brought to the world where nothing else matters. The noise reduces to a faint echo and the corridors become a one-way un-obstacled path, and the only strong sensation is Kyungsoo’s warm hand on his wrist.

Nothing else mattered.

Even if Kyungsoo know Jongin from his head to his toes to his mental framework, he can never know about Jongin’s feelings. Jongin decides, that he is content with just this. But there is a nagging at the back of his head, the same voice that he possesses that whispers to him in a haunting lullaby.

_For how long?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written this because I couldn't fall asleep. First time writing a serious, not-so-serious fiction so please be good to me. :)
> 
> Feedbacks - laways appreciated(don't be too hard bbs)


End file.
